Transcript No Slide Title

Project Management: A
Managerial Approach
Chapter 3 – The Project Manager
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Overview
• PMs and Organizational Alignment
• Key PM Responsibilities
• Career Management
• PM “Realities”
• PM Selection
• PM Considerations
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Project Management and the
Project Manager
• The Functional Manager vs. The Project
Manager
– Functional managers are usually specialists,
analytically oriented and they know the details of
each operation for which they are responsible
– Project managers must be generalists that can
oversee many functional areas and have the
ability to put the pieces of a task together to
form a coherent whole
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Functional Manager and the PM
• The Functional Manager
– Analytical Approach
– Direct, technical supervisor
• The Project Manager
– Systems Approach
– Facilitator and generalist
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Organizations and Functional
Manager
• The Functional Manager
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Project Management and the PM
• The PM
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Project Management and the PM
• Major questions face the PM:
– 1. What needs to be done?
– 2. When must it be done?
– 3. How are the resources required to do this job
going to be obtained?
• PM is responsible for organizing, staffing,
budgeting, directing, planning, and controlling the
project.
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Responsibilities of a PM
• Responsibility to the Parent Organization
• Responsibility to the Client
• Responsibility to the Team Members
• Above all, the PM must never allow senior
management to be surprised—be
prepared to give “bad news”
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Responsibilities to the Parent
Organization
• Conservation of resources
• Timely and accurate project
communications
• Careful, competent management of the
project
• Protect the firm from high risk
• Accurate reporting of project status with
regard to budget and schedule
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Responsibilities of the PM
• Responsibility to the Client
– Preserve integrity of project and client
– Resolve conflict among interested parties
– Ensure performance, budgets, and deadlines
are met
• Responsibility to project team members
– Fairness, consistency, respect, honesty
– Concern for members’ future after project
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Project Management Career
Paths
• Most Project Managers get their training in
one or more of three ways:
– On-the-job
– Project management seminars and workshops
– Active participation in the programs of the local
chapters of the Project Management Institute
– Formal education in degree/certificate programs
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Project Management Experience
• Experience as a PM serves to teach the
importance of:
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An organized plan for reaching an objective
Negotiation with one’s co-workers
Follow through
Sensitivity to the political realities of organizational life
• Careers often starts with participation in small into
larger projects, until given control over small, then
larger projects
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Special Demands on the PM
• A number of demands are critical to the
management of projects:
– Acquiring sufficient resources
– Acquiring and inspiring personnel
• Finding sources of internal motivation
– Dealing with obstacles
– Making project goal trade offs
– Dealing with risk and failure (perceived or otherwise)
– Maintaining multiple channels of communication
– Negotiation
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Acquiring Sufficient Resources
• Resources initially budgeted for projects are
frequently inadequate
– Sometimes resource trade-offs are required
– Subcontracting is an option
– Project and functional managers perceive
availability of resources to be strictly limited
– Competition for resources CAN turn into “winlose” propositions between project and functional
managers
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Acquiring and Inspiring Personnel
• A major problem for the PM is that most people
required for a project must be “borrowed”
– At times, functional managers may become jealous if they
perceive a project as more glamorous than their own
functional area
– Typically, the functional manager retains control of
personnel evaluation, salary, and promotion for those
people lent out to projects
– Because the functional manager controls pay and
promotion, the PM cannot promise much beyond the
challenge of the work itself
– Violation of “Unity of Command” principle
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Attracting the “Best” Team
• Characteristics of effective team
members:
– High quality technical skills
– Political sensitivity
– Strong problem orientation
– Strong goal orientation
– High self-esteem
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Dealing with Obstacles
• One characteristic of any project is its
uniqueness and with that come a series of
crises:
– At the inception of a project, the “fires” tend to be
associated with resources
– As a project nears completion, obstacles tend to
be clustered around two key issues:
• Last minute schedule and technical changes
• Uncertainty surrounding what happens to members
of the project team when the project is completed
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Making Project Goal Trade-offs
• The PM must make trade offs between the
project goals of cost, time and performance
– During the design or formation stage of the
project life cycle, there is no significant difference
in the importance PM’s place on the three goals
– Schedule is the primary goal during the build up
stage, being more important than performance,
which is in turn significantly more important than
cost
– During the final stage, phaseout, performance is
significantly more important than cost
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Making Project Goal Trade-offs
• Relative importance of project objectives for each stage
of the project life cycle:
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Failure, the Risk of Fear, and Failure
• It is difficult, at times, to distinguish between
project failure, partial failure, and success.
– What appears to be a failure at one point in the
life of a project may look like a success at
another
– Perception is reality—PMs need to control
perceptions
– Communication is key to minimize impact of most
“failures”
• Accountability never transfers from PM
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Failure and Project Types - 1
• Two general types of projects:
– Type 1 - these projects are generally wellunderstood, routine construction projects
• Appear simple at the beginning of the project
• Rarely fail because they are late or over budget, though
commonly are both
• They fail because they are not organized to handle
unexpected crises and deviations from the plan
• These projects often lack the appropriate technical
expertise to handle such crises
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Failure and Project Types - 2
– Type 2 - these are not well understood, and there
may be considerable uncertainty about specifically
what must be done
• Many difficulties early in the life of the project
• Often considered planning problems
• Most of these problems result from a failure to define
the mission carefully
• Often fail to get the client’s acceptance on the project
mission
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Multiple Communication Paths
• Most of the project manager’s time is spent
communicating with the many groups
interested in the project
– Considerable time must be spent selling, reselling,
and explaining the project
– Interested parties include:
• Top management
• Functional departments
• Clients
• Members of the project team
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Communication Realities
• To effectively deal with the demands, a PM
must understand and deal with certain
fundamental issues:
– Must understand why the project exists
– Critical to have the support of top management
– Build and maintain a solid information network
– Must be flexible in many ways, with as many
people, and about as many activities as possible
throughout the life of the project
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Selecting the Project Manager
• Some key attributes, skills, and qualities
that have been sought in PM are:
– Strong technical background
– Assertive and successful functional manager
– Mature and calm
– Someone who is currently available
– Someone on good terms with senior executives
– Knows how to keep a team focused and
inspired
– Experience in several different functions
– A person who can walk on (or part) the waters
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PM Selection “Criteria”
• Four major categories of skills that are
required for the PM and serve as the key
criteria for selection:
– Credibility
– Sensitivity
– Managerial skills and adaptive leadership style
– Ability to handle stress and conflict
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Credibility
• The PM needs two kinds of credibility:
– Technical credibility –
• Perceived by key stakeholders as possessing sufficient
technical knowledge to direct the project
– Conversational competence
– Administrative credibility
• Keeping the project on schedule and within costs
• Making sure reports are accurate and timely
• Ensuring project team has material, equipment, and
labor when needed.
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Sensitivity
• There are several ways for project managers to
display sensitivity:
– Understanding the organization’s political structure
– Sense interpersonal conflict on the project team or
between team members and outsiders
– Does not avoid conflict, but confronts it and deals with it
before it escalates
– Keeps team members focused on problems not people
– Situational “radar”--ability to sense when team members
may try to “sweep things under the rug”
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Leadership Style
• Leadership:
“interpersonal influence, exercised in situation and
directed through the communication process, toward the attainment of a
specified goal or goals.”
• Other attributes may include:
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–
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enthusiasm
optimism
energy
tenacity
courage
personal maturity
adaptability
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The PM “Moral Compass”
• A PM must also have a strong sense of ethics. Some common
ethical missteps are listed below:
– “wired” bids and contracts (the winner has been predetermined)
– “buy-in” (bidding low with the intention of cutting corners or forcing
subsequent contract changes)
– “kickbacks”
– “covering” for team members (group cohesiveness)
– taking “shortcuts” (to meet deadlines or budgets)
– using marginal (substandard) materials
– compromising on safety
– violating standards
– consultant (e.g., auditors) loyalties (to employer or to client or to public)
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The PM Ethics Code - 1
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The PM Ethics Code - 2
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PM and Stress
• Four major causes of stress associated PM
role:
– Never developing a consistent set of procedures
and techniques with which to manage their work
– Many PMs have “too much on their plates”
– Some PMs have a high need to achieve that is
frustrated by the tradeoffs
– The parent organization is in the middle of major
change
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Multicultural Communications and
Managerial Behavior
• The importance of language cannot be
overstated
– Communication cannot be separated from the
communicator
– Managerial and personal behaviours of the PM
must be considered in the communication
process
• Structure and style of communications
• Managerial and personal behaviour
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Multicultural Communications and
Managerial Behavior
• Structure and Style of Communications:
– In the United States, delegation is a preferred
managerial style
– In cultures where authority is highly centralized,
it becomes the project manager’s responsibility
to seek out information
– The manager of an international project cannot
count on being voluntarily informed of problems
and potential problems by his/her subordinates
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Multicultural Communications and
Managerial Behavior
• Managerial and Personal Behavior
– In a society with highly structured social classes,
it is difficult to practice participative management
– There is an assumption that the more educated,
higher-class manager’s authority will be
denigrated by using a participative style
– The more structured a country’s social system,
the less direct managerial communication tends
to be
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